Humorist Dave Barry kicks off Savannah Book Festival on Valentine's Day

Saturday

Feb 9, 2013 at 10:44 PM

Linda Sickler @LindaSickler

Dave Barry.

Just say his name, and listeners begin to grin. Barry will speak Thursday at the sold-out Savannah Book Festival Kickoff Ceremony at Trustees Theater.

An author, humorist and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, Barry also will discuss and sign his new novel, "Insane City." Not surprisingly, it's pretty funny, just like its author.

"I was actually elected class clown of Pleasantville High School," Barry says. "I thought I was funny. Not everyone else thought I was, though.

"I was one of those kids who entertain their peers. That's how I got people to like me. That's who I was."

Teachers tried to straighten Barry out but, thank heavens, they never succeeded. Born in Armonk, N.Y., he earned a degree in English from Haverford College in Pennsylvania while playing in a band called The Federal Duck.

After writing humor columns in high school and college, Barry got his first real news job in 1971 at a paper called the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pa. "That's probably the most embarrassing name for a newspaper ever," he says.

"I wanted to get a job where I could write. I didn't know that much about journalism, but I learned a lot really quickly.

"I discovered what I was getting paid for was getting information accurately," Barry says. "I've been in journalism one way or another ever since."

As a reporter, Barry covered city council meetings and school boards, but he liked writing humor. "If I could have picked a job, I would have said I wanted to be a humor writer, but I didn't think there was a career opportunity there," he says.

"But if you did your regular work, covering school boards and city councils, they'd let you write a column. I wrote a humor column every week. Some people seemed to like it."

After leaving the Daily Local News, Barry worked as a copy editor for another newspaper and taught effective writing seminars. But he kept writing the column.

"I started sending it around to newspapers and started writing some freelance pieces," Barry says. "Eventually some of the bigger papers started publishing it."

In 1983, the Miami Herald offered Barry a full-time job writing a humor column. Five years later, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.

"The people who knew kept it secret," he says. "It was a complete and total shock. That may have been the best way to find out."

The announcement also was a surprise. "They tricked me," Barry says.

"My editor, Gene Weingarten, who's now a humor columnist at the Washington Post, called me. I was supposed to go to Key West that day.

"He said, 'You have to come to the Herald for a meeting. The publisher wants you here. It's very important."

Barry argued and argued, but Weingarten insisted. "I went in and brought my family with me," Barry says.

"Everyone gathered around. All of a sudden, I learned that I'd won the Pulitzer Prize. It was very much a surprise."

Birth as a novelist

In the early 1980s, Barry began writing bestselling humor books. His first novel, "Big Trouble," was published in 1999 and his second, "Tricky Business," in 2002.

Like his other novels, "Insane City" is set in Miami. "It's about a wedding that goes horribly, horribly wrong," Barry says.

"The groom is kind of a slacker, the bride a high-powered attorney. Miami sort of gets them.

"When they arrive, the groom and his groomsmen make the mistake of stopping on the way to their hotel at South Beach and party way too hard," he says. "Before the night is over, the groom has lost the ring and picked up a very large stripper and some Haitian immigrants who are here illegally."

Unlike his first two novels, "Insane City" isn't a mystery. "Nothing really mysterious happens - a lot of stupid things happen," Barry says. "There isn't anything that could not happen in Miami."

While Barry makes merciless fun of Miami and South Florida in his writing, he insists its good-natured fun. "I'm not a normal or sane person," he says. "I love Miami.

"It's very weird, sometimes scary, but a fascinating place. It never gets boring here. I like the weather. If you're going to write humor, you couldn't do much better."

Although he stopped writing a weekly column in 2004, Barry just wrote a column about a burning issue in South Florida.

"We have a python challenge going on here," he says. "The state of Florida invites anyone to kill Burmese pythons in the Everglades - on purpose. We've invited."

Barry traveled to the Olympics and the political conventions to write about them. "It's a nice thing to hear, 'I miss your column,' he says.

"I don't miss it. This last year, I probably wrote 30 columns, so I still do crank them out."

Some of Barry's recurring topics have included exploding or flaming items, including cows, whales, vacuum cleaners, toilets, Pop-Tarts and Barbie dolls. One column was largely responsible for the movement to observe International Talk Like a Pirate Day every year on Sept. 19.

When Barry made fun of Grand Forks, N.D., the city named a sewage pumping station after him. He actually appeared for the dedication.

"Different people have different memories of different columns," Barry says. "I'm always surprised at what people remember.

"They remember lines I don't remember at all, sometimes because I didn't write them," he says. "I wrote about getting a colonoscopy and that thing just went viral.

Many fans of the column enjoyed reading about Barry's family and his dogs, Earnest and Zippy. Currently, he has a dog named Lucy he claims is determined to urinate on every square inch of North America.

"I always had dogs," Barry says. "My wife, Michelle, never had dogs, but our daughter, Sophie, broke her down four or five years ago.

"We got a rescue dog named Lucy, and now my wife is the world's biggest dog fan. She sees the reason now why you have to have a dog."

Music also is a constant in Barry's life. While at the Miami Herald, he played lead guitar in a band with his colleagues called The Urban Professionals. Currently, he plays lead guitar in the literary band the The Rock Bottom Remainders, which includes Stephen King, Amy Tan, Ridley Pearson, Scott Turow and Mitch Albom.

Savannah was one of the first stops set for Barry's current book tour.

"You go where the publisher tells you to go," he says. "They said go to Savannah. I love Savannah."

6 p.m. Trustees Theater. Keynote address with best-selling novelist James Patterson; followed by book signing. Sold out.

FEB. 16

10 a.m. Trustees Theater. "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" author Jeff Kinney lecture and book signing. $5 adults and children

9 a.m.-5 p.m. Telfair Square spectacular. All author lectures and signings in and around Telfair Square are free to attend. Books for signing should be purchased through the Savannah Book Festival's bookstore in Telfair Square on the day of the event.

Trinity United Methodist Church, 225 W. President St.

9-10 a.m. Hoda Kotb

10:15-11:15 a.m. Al Gore

11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Heidi Kraft

1:30-2:30 p.m. Jake Tapper

2:45-3:45 p.m. Evan Thomas

4-5 p.m. Garry Willis

Jepson Center, Neises Auditorium

9-10 a.m. Daniel Pink

10:15-11:15 a.m. B.A. Shapiro

11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Paula McLain

1:30-2:30 p.m. Mark Frost

2:45-3:45 p.m. Don Mann

4-5 p.m. Leonard Pitts

Telfair Academy, Rotunda

9-10 a.m. Colm Toibin

10:15-11:15 a.m. Isabel Wilkerson

11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Ben Fountain

1:30-2:30 p.m. T.C. Boyle

2:45-3:45 p.m. Richard Paul Evans

4-5 p.m. Claire Cook

Telfair Academy, Sculpture Gallery

9-10 a.m. Karen Thompson Walker

10:15-11:15 a.m. Joseph Kanon

11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Susanna Sonneberg

1:30-2:30 p.m. J.R. Moehringer

2:45-3:45 p.m. Bruce Cameron

Telfair Square Tent

9-10 a.m. Mary Sharratt

10:15-11:15 a.m. A.J. Jacobs

11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Griff and Cheryl Day

Noon-2 p.m. Gregg Allman, book signing only

1:30-2:30 p.m. Mark Murphy

2:45-3:45 p.m. Marissa Meyer

Jepson Center, Boardroom

9-10 a.m. Kimberly Ergul and Holley Jaakkola

10:15-11:15 a.m. Kristyn Kusek Lewis

11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Kevin McCarey

1:30-2:30 p.m. Jim Morekis

2:45-3:45 p.m. Jane Fishman

4-5 p.m. Beverly Jenkins

FEB. 17

3 p.m. Trustees Theater. Closing address with best-selling author David Baldacci; followed by book signing. $10